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On a Wednesday morning earlier this month, two dozen cyclists gathered at the Ave Maria Latin Cafe on Bloor St. W. On another day, many of the riders might have picked up their coffee at one of the chain stores down the street, but on this morning they’d decided to make a point with their purchase.

The cafe had recently told a TV news station that the new separated bike lane on Bloor St. was hurting its business. Supporters of the lane — which was installed on the major downtown artery in August after decades of hard-fought advocacy — wanted to demonstrate that bicyclists are customers too.

Supporters of the bike lane are wise to pay attention to how Bloor’s business owners are faring. Although in May councillors overwhelmingly approved the cycle track on a pilot project basis in a vote of 38-3, making it permanent after its one-year trial period could be a hard sell if local retailers aren’t onside.

And although it’s still early days, some businesses say they’re already taking a hit.

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Maria Suarez, who owns Ave Maria, wasn’t exactly won over by the cyclists’ coffee “love-in.” In an interview later that day, she told the Star that her sales are down 40 per cent since the bike lane went in, and neighbouring businesses are seeing similar declines.

“Everybody is talking, we have to do something,” she said. “Everybody is very concerned about it.”

Doug Miller, owner of Doug Miller Books at Bloor and Euclid Ave., also estimated that his sales were down about 40 per cent. Like Suarez, he attributed the downturn to the loss of on-street parking.

Although there are 860 off-street parking spaces in the area, roughly half of the 280 on-street pay-and-display spots along the bike lane’s route between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd.were removed to make way for the bike lane.

Miller said the impact was “immediate.”

“As soon as the bike lanes came in and the parking was greatly diminished, a lot of our regular customers stopped coming in,” said Miller, who is himself a frequent cyclist.

Jason Lee, the chairman of the Korea Town Business Improvement Area, said he feared his neighbourhood at the western end of the 2.5-km bike lane was more vulnerable to the loss of parking than the Annex area on the eastern end, because Korea Town has less foot traffic. (The chair of the Bloor Annex BIA said he’s received “mixed reports”).

Lee said that many member businesses are reporting significant losses, and he reckoned that at the moment most aren’t in favour of keeping the lane.

He added that the pilot was for the “greater good” however, and it was important to wait until the test period is done before making definitive judgments. “We have to wait and see this through,” he said.

Mike Layton, the local councillor for Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina, allowed that the bike lane project may have gotten off to a “shaky first step” with some businesses. The construction of the lanes was disruptive, he said, and the reduction of on-street parking was temporarily exacerbated by the fact that a portion of a nearby Green P lot was out of service while it was reconstructed.

Layton, who is a strong proponent of the bike lane, has met with local business owners and even formed working groups with the BIA to address their concerns. As a result, the city is looking for ways to tweak the configuration of the bike lane to allow for more loading zones and additional parking spaces where possible.

Although he’s taking their concerns seriously, Layton argued that it’s too early to know the long-term impact of the bike lanes on businesses.

As part of the pilot project’s evaluation, the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation is leading a study that will measure business owners’ perceptions, residents’ spending patterns, and storefront vacancy rates before and after the lane’s installation.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to start making definitive judgments on what the bike lane has done until we start to see some of that data come in,” Layton said.

The councillor also warned against assuming the bike lane was the direct cause of any downturns to local businesses. Previous research by the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation found that only 10 per cent of visitors to the Annex arrive by car. If numbers were similar in Korea Town, it would suggest that the removal of on-street parking would have limited impact.

While the jury may still be out on the lane’s effect on businesses, it appears to be popular with riders. Last month advocacy group Cycle Toronto counted 893 bicycles in the lane during a two-and-a-half-hour morning period, an increase of almost 300 per cent compared to three years ago.

Cycle Toronto executive director Jared Kolb said that at this early stage, reports of faltering sales are not something the group finds “too concerning.” He predicted that a year from now “the vast majority of businesses are going to be pretty happy” with the bike lane.

But his organization isn’t leaving anything to chance. Kolb said Cycle Toronto is planning a “bike-to-shop” campaign in the next few weeks that will encourage bicyclists to patronize local retailers.

“I think change is hard. But I don’t see that there’s any reason why we can’t ensure that the bike lanes themselves work well for everybody,” he said.

Some business owners won’t need much convincing. Matthew Languay, who runs Basecamp Climbing at Manning Ave., said he hopes the bike lane stays put. His gym has only been open eight months and while he couldn’t say whether the cycle track had improved business, he said his customers love it.

“I can tell you that a very large portion of our members are cyclists, and they all bring their bikes into the gym,” he said. “So we do have a lot of happy climbers.”

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